Here is some background to open up just how much deeper these water problems go, and how greed and corruption are a factor. First:

In 2008, PWSA borrowed more than $400m in variable rate bonds just as the market collapsed. This year, debt payments alone accounted for 44% of the authority’s operating budget. (Guardian)

Imagine falling so far behind on your student loans to a predatory lender that almost half your income goes to penalties and fees. Now try to pay rent, utilities, eat, and whoops fix your truck or buy medicine. That’s more or less going on with the fancy “Swaptions” deal that our Water Authority signed, and it’s hard to imagine our water pipes getting fixed under that sort of handicap. Continue reading →

With its 6 bedrooms and bathrooms; its “huge formal rooms,” domed breakfast room and art deco bar; its in-ground swimming pool and several garages; and its lions and goddess statues, the old Stern family property has sat empty for a long time.

The estate at 1830 Beechwood Blvd. rests near the corner of Forbes and Dallas, just south of Homewood Cemetery and west of Frick Park. Built of white painted bricks sprawling smoothly into a vast north-facing hillside, the emptiness of the bomb mansion now joins its gothic fixtures in lending it a haunted aspect.

No one with the money to purchase such a single-family dwelling, upgrade it and maintain its “manicured grounds” really wants to reside in the heart of the city, I guess.

Now a deal worth $1.8 million is pending on the property, which last sold for $525,000 in 2002, and is assessed at $628,400 by the county.

A construction company plans to demolish it all and develop eleven (11) new free-standing 3-4 bedroom condominiums to market at $900,000 apiece — for a grand total of just under $10 million.

40 million dollars from the federal government, to enhance transportation infrastructure.

Another $10 million provided by a venture capital firm’s philanthropy — the carrot tied to the wagon of “high tech” innovations.

Pittsburgh, from a field of 78 applicants, had made it to the final round of 7 — the celebrated seven! We were competing against the likes of Portland, Austin, San Francisco, Denver… all the most shining cities upon hills.

Way too many people don’t want you to be President. You’re a weak candidate, with no knowledge, you make a lot of mistakes, you can’t control your delegation, and you’re toying with forces beyond your understanding. You should drop out before things get even more embarrassing.

Hillary Clinton has spent a long career in public service, and knows her stuff.

Yet Ravenstahl and Clinton assimilated into the same centuries-old political arrangements, and may be of the same species. That top-down, hierarchical “machine”-era politics which the one still pursues, was once pursued by the other.

This blasé politics of privilege, self-perpetualization and clientelism, together with enough arrogance and faith in spinmeisters, tends to produce stubborn questions about patronage and other official privileges.

Well here we go! A highfaluting academic is coming on to help the School Board select its #next one.

At the end of a public voting meeting last week, school director Regina Holley made a motion to hire the Perkins Consulting Group — headed by Brian Perkins, director of the Urban Education Leadership Program at Columbia University’s Teachers College — at a cost not to exceed $100,000. (P-G, Clarece Polk)

How that came about was…

Ms. Holley said she and Mr. Sumpter met Mr. Perkins at a conference for the Council of Urban Boards of Education in July and were “impressed with his credentials.” When Mrs. Lane announced in September her plans to retire in June, Ms. Holley recommended Mr. Perkins as a consultant in the superintendent search. (ibid)

It’s always refreshing to get a frank explanation. But now that he’s our Hundred Thousand Dollar Man, Pittsburgh needs to learn about him!

My favorite thing about his professional bio is that he served on a school board for 11 years. Yale doesn’t hurt, either. The focus on “urban education” is certainly relevant.

Leafing through some of his reports of surveys on school climate and parental perceptions, I got the impression that Mr. Perkins and his associates approach education from the “Left,” or as a liberal might.

It’s hard to explain. The educational Right focuses more on testing, discipline, efficiency and conviction. The educational Left puts a greater emphasis on communication, empathy, problem-solving and science.

The Comet’s only concern off the bat is whether Mr. Perkins has any particular expertise in conducting job searches. Maybe the School Board will contract with still another party to help with the nuts and bolts of human resources; all the better to segregate process from selectivity. Still, his credentials seem to fit that of a schools superintendent better than an executive headhunter.

Maybe he’s here to advise the next board more generally, at its outset.

It is obvious that Pittsburgh Public Schools did what was sadly necessary…

Board members [of the Wilkinsburg School District] say that giving up on the schools is the best thing they can do to give their students a shot at a better education and a better life. But two neighboring school districts declined to take the students on before a third, Pittsburgh Public Schools, found room at one of the city’s lowest-performing high schools, located in one of its poorest neighborhoods.

So in a deal approved this week, Wilkinsburg students are headed for a school that is much like the one they are leaving behind. (WaPo, Emma Brown)

…but now it gets really tricky.

Because in addition to ‘the ordinary amount’ of “chaos and failure” prevalent in the educational vicinity…

Students from the two schools have long feuded, [a Wilkinsburg district mother] said, and she worries about an eruption of violence when they’re all under one roof. (ibid)

More worrisome still, I would wager, if those students perceive that the adults around them either don’t have it together Continue reading →